Modesty Blaise: Ripper Jax by Peter O’Donnell and Enric Badia Romero
Reviewed by Annabel When offered a review copy of Titan Books latest addition to their ongoing reprints of the Modesty Blaise cartoon strips series, I couldn’t say no, firstly as…
Sweetgirl by Travis Mulhauser
Reviewed by Annabel Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell has long been one of my favourite novels. Woodrell’s books which are mostly set in the Missouri Ozarks tend to feature poor folk…
The Trees by Ali Shaw
Reviewed by Annabel Thank goodness that Ali Shaw’s novels are impossible to categorise. They are contemporary dramas with transformation at their heart, not out and out fantasies, but full of…
Sophia by Michael Bible
Reviewed by Annabel There are only 105 pages to this short novel, making it a novella really, but it sure does pack a punch. It has a cast of characters…
Cut Me In by Ed McBain
Reviewed by Annabel Ed McBain (aka Evan Hunter, although that wasn’t his original name either) was a prolific author, writing over eighty novels. These included over fifty ‘87th Precinct’ books; with…
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Reviewed by Annabel The anticipation of re-reading a book first read and enjoyed as a child always gives me a feeling of mild discomfort. Can it work on an adult…
The Last of the Bowmans by J. Paul Henderson
Reviewed by Annabel Do you remember how the wonderful TV series Six Feet Under began? In the opening scene, one of the key characters, Nathaniel Fisher Sr., is run over by a…
The Great Swindle by Pierre Lemaitre
Translated by Frank Wynne Reviewed by Annabel French author Lemaitre is best known for his gory yet gripping trilogy of serial killer novels featuring the detective Camille Verhoeven. They aren’t…
Death is a Welcome Guest by Louise Welsh
Paperback review by Annabel Most trilogies are strictly sequential, one volume carrying on from another. Louise Welsh’s ‘Plague Times’ trilogy is slightly different (so far) in that the first two…
Asking For It by Louise O’Neill
Reviewed by Annabel O’Neill’s first novel, Only Ever Yours, published in 2014, won a host of prizes in her native Ireland. Aimed at older teenagers upwards, it was a futuristic…
The Winter Place by Alexander Yates (YA)
Reviewed by Annabel Tess’s mother died giving birth to her brother Axel. They live with their father in a cabin at the edge of a town in the middle of…
Number 11 by Jonathan Coe
Reviewed by Annabel I was lucky enough to have discovered Jonathan Coe fairly early on in his career, back when the paperback edition of What a Carve Up! was published…
A Lion Was Learning to Ski by Ranjit Bolt
Reviewed by Annabel Ranjit Bolt is well known as a translator and playwright. He came to prominence when two of his translations of French comedies by Pierre Corneille, The Liar and The Illusion,…
Mythology – An illustrated journey into our imagined worlds by Christopher Dell
Reviewed by Annabel. As picture books for grown ups go, Mythology is the business. Now available in soft covers, this nine inches square book yields glorious pictorial spreads from the very moment you…
The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell This may have been the first novel I’ve read by Franco-Vietnamese SF&F author Aliette de Bodard, but it certainly won’t be the last. She has already…
The Autobiography of James T. Kirk edited by David A. Goodman
Reviewed by Annabel I still have a huge affection for Star Trek in all its incarnations and, as time goes on, although Jean-Luc Picard is the man for me, I prefer the…
Not on Fire, But Burning by Greg Hrbek
Reviewed by Annabel The prologue of this novel set in the near future begins in some style. College student Skyler Wakefield opted to stay and work as a babysitter for…
The End of Vandalism by Tom Drury
Reviewed by Annabel Tom Drury is the author of a trio of exquisite observational dramas following the everyday life of the inhabitants of Grouse County, Iowa, a location which epitomises…
Kauthar by Meike Ziervogel
Reviewed by Annabel Many of you will recognise Meike Ziervogel as the founder of Peirene Press; we’ve reviewed several of their novella length books in Shiny New Books (here and here for example)….
The Reflection by Hugo Wilcken
Reviewed by Annabel In this review, I could just make a list of the all the great noir novels and movies and their authors that went through my mind as…
Two Years Eight Months & Twenty-Eight Nights by Salman Rushdie
Reviewed by Annabel Before you ask – yes, that does make 1001 nights. Rushdie’s new novel may have its roots in the ancient tales but it is also a thoroughly modern story…
The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley
Reviewed by Annabel Hats off to Bloomsbury on the lovely design of this wonderful novel. You can’t see here, but there is a cut-out of the watch dial, and all around…
The Last Pilot by Benjamin Johncock
Review by Annabel Anyone who has ever been enthralled by reading or seeing the film of The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe’s seminal story of the USA’s quest to break the…
Rupert Wallis – My First Year as a Published Author
As his second YA novel All Sorts of Possible is published (reviewed here), author Rupert Wallis stops off at Shiny New Books on his blog tour to tell us about his experience including…